


by any other name

by serendipityful (staircase_wit)



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, mentions of other relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staircase_wit/pseuds/serendipityful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They go from friends to lovers to thinkers to doers to everything in-between.</p><p>[Or basically, these two idiots are in love]</p>
            </blockquote>





	by any other name

**i. storge**

Sometimes Jeff doesn’t know how he managed to talk his way into a law firm because the seven stupidest words he’s ever said always come back to haunt him at night.

“I’d be psyched to be your friend?” Really? Britta holds him to that statement every time he does so much as pay her a compliment.

The pure, simple truth is that he doesn’t want to be Britta’s “friend.” Not that he’d ever mention that to Shirley because she’d proceed with the unsubtle hints that they’d make a good couple. Jeff isn’t looking to be anyone’s _boyfriend_. Still there’s something that keeps him from finding another “conquest” to pursue.  He decidedly attributes it to the way Britta’s hands twiddle with a stray lock of her dirty blonde hair whenever she’s figuring out how to conjugate verbs. That must’ve been it, he reasoned. It was a tic that was probably biologically linked to pheromones or whatever made him attracted to her.

Then one day, she calls him and it’s seven in the morning and he responds _immediately_ like an idiot. Turns out she’s had some trouble with a metal deathtrap that she calls a car and Jeff the Mechanic (an oxymoron if there’s ever been one) has decided to save the day.

“I should’ve known this would happen,” Britta mutters darkly to herself when his Lexus pulls up. “This is what you get when you buy a car that runs on corn.”

Jeff doesn’t even look at the car, which is in shambles. “Yeah, we’ll just leave that here. I’ll drive you, get in.”

“Wait, what?”

“Britta, I hate to break it to you,” Jeff begins in a voice as sincere as his bachelor’s degree, “and I know you called me for help, but I can’t fix that. Even if I could, it’d probably break down again before you even reached Greendale. _It runs on corn_.”

She crosses her arms. “Fine,” she admits, shooting him a wary look, “But we can’t just leave it out here. It’d cause so much damage to the ecosystem…”

“You’d think it’d be biodegradable too,” he mutters, but he still calls the tow truck company anyways.

They take his car to school together and they don’t have enough time to comment on how awkward the situation is because Britta immediately asks if she can change the radio station. None of her favorites are playing on “mainstream radio, apart from one art-house hit that he swears is singing in Swedish. After a few minutes of arguing, Jeff spins the radio dial haphazardly and all of sudden his car is brimming with the infectious tune of “You Belong With Me.” They glance at each other momentarily, before shrugging and letting it play. They continue to make fun of the lyrics and soon find themselves (un)ironically singing along until they reach Greendale.

“You know,” Britta starts to say as she shuts the car door. It takes her a while to finish her sentence because she makes the effort to walk around the front of the car until she’s facing Jeff. “I didn’t say ‘thank you’ for giving me a ride. So, yeah, thank you.”

“No problem,” he replies without missing a beat.

They walk to class, a hundred meters without a gap in their conversation. Soon enough, Britta starts carpooling with him every morning. And somewhere between that and two disastrous attempts at cat-sitting and him asking out his Statistics professor, Jeff realizes that he and Britta have become friends.

 

**ii. ludus**

There are many things that Jeff doesn’t understand. The first of those would be Michelle’s fascination with _Glee_. After a fake smile and giving his soon-to-be-regretted consent, he sits down to yet another brain tumor of an episode: Quinn mopes about being pregnant and acts like a former bitch. Rachel belts out a song. The black and the Asian guy don’t say a word. Will or Finn (what is with that guy?) recites the Moral Lesson of the Week at the end.

“God, it really is as terrible as our school’s glee club,” Britta says, a horrified expression on her face. Soon enough, it breaks into a slightly malicious grin. “I cannot believe she makes you watch it. You really are a big old sap at heart.” Britta reaches out and pokes him repeatedly in the arm.

“And again, you can’t tell the rest of the group,” Jeff reminds her.

He isn’t exactly sure how he ended up telling Britta this particular secret. Actually, he’s pretty sure that Annie would turn it into a viewing party, Shirley and Troy would send him questionable looks, while Pierce would cough a _very_ subtle “GAY!” and Abed would disown him as a friend. So that left him _a lot_ of choice. And lately he’s been telling so many things to Britta that it feels normal.

“Fine,” Britta relents, “I won’t tell them. But I can’t see why you can’t just go up and tell her, ‘This is a shit show. I don’t want to watch it, not now, not ever. Can we please change the channel?’”

For some reason, Britta has a habit of talking about Michelle as if the professor was a grave human rights violation in a country whose name Britta was not pronouncing correctly. But before letting that puzzle his mind, Jeff still had to answer her question.

“Because,” he sighs wearily, “I want this relationship to work. And if I have to tolerate small things like _Glee_ , then I’ll do that.”  
“Do you know how much money Fox is making off of it? It’s going to last for another five unnecessary seasons, then it’ll get spin-offs and _syndicated_ , oh God.”

“All right, don’t be so Abed about it.”

Britta chuckles quietly. “Besides, arguing is good. It’s a natural part of relationships. Look at _us_ — who’d have thought that the seven of us would be friends? We fight all the time, but we’re still practically a family.”

“Yeah,” Jeff echoes, not actually paying attention. He squirms in his seat, glancing fleetingly at the clock in the study room. 11:48. Twelve minutes until he has to meet Michelle for lunch.

“So, go to Michelle and tell her that you hate _Glee_ ,” Britta encouraged quietly. “If you’re telling her the truth, what’s the worst that could happen?”

 

**iii. pragma**

The morning after they sleep together the second time is terrifying. For starters, they decided to apparently _lose all semblance of sanity_ on a Wednesday night (it was Free Drinks for Ladies night at the Red Door, Britta had come for the drinks, Jeff for the women). Meaning that Thursday would start off with a very peppy and over-enthusiastic greeting from Annie.

“Hi Jeff!” Annie bounds up to him, a wide grin on her face. Guilt nibs itself away at his brain and Jeff forces himself to look anywhere but at her Disney eyes as he echoes her greeting.

“Hi Annie,” Britta says with a small smile, reminding the young woman of her presence. To Jeff’s discomfort, Britta finds Annie’s schoolgirl crush entertaining.

Annie pauses hesitantly before forcing a grin, “Hi Britta.”

It’s not that the two of them aren’t friends, but their relationship hasn’t exactly been perfect since the first week of the school year. Annie takes time to side-eye Jeff’s Lexus, muttering something about carpooling.

“Well, do you guys want to walk to class?” Annie’s tone changes dramatically. All of sudden she is rainbows and butterflies again. It’s quite frightening, to say the least.

“Sorry,” Jeff enunciates each word cautiously, gauging her reaction, “I need to get to my independent study in the Social Science wing, instead of ... Legal Aspects of Healthcare Management?”

Annie nods vigorously, so pleased that he remembered her course schedule that she immediately strode off towards the Science building with a certain spring in her step.

“When are you going to tell her that you’re not actually taking an independent study in conspiracy theories?” Britta asks him pointedly as they walk through the courtyard.

“Once I accept my eternal fate in the lowest circle of Hell,” Jeff replies making a beeline for the cafeteria where he’ll enjoy a cup of terrible coffee and theoretically learn about Area 51.

Britta settles into a brisk, even pace beside him. They round the corner too casually for his comfort. Jeff mentally kicks himself for wanting to ask _the_ question, but tries to make his voice seem as nonchalant as possibly when he finally asks, “So, are we ever going to talk about last night?”

“Do we need to talk?” Britta rounds on him, a coy smile playing at her lips.

“Yes,” Jeff admits, feeling every bit stupid. Taking a breath, he reasoned, “There _are_ logistics to these sort of things, like—”

“Like Annie?”

“Did I say Annie?” He retorts quickly, but defensively. Britta nods and Jeff winces inwardly. “Okay. Fine. _Maybe_ Annie, but that’s only because the two of you are friends and what would she say if you went around screwing me?”

“So it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’s a pretty girl who likes you?” Britta raised her eyebrows, thoroughly unconvinced.

“Yeah.”

“Well, get off your high horse Winger. Come on Jeff, do you really think women would get into a catfight over a man? This isn’t a show on the E! network,” she rolls her eyes, a cocksure expression on her face. Sighing, she added in a much softer tone, “Look, me and Annie are still going to be friends. We’re staying afterschool together to put finishing touches on our BP oil spill diorama! How bad could that go?”

“Yeah, all right,” Jeff replies equally skeptical. As a cautionary measure, he adds, “But this whole thing, whatever we’re doing … it’s non-committal, right?”

“Of course,” Britta doesn’t bat an eyelid. “What else would it be?”

“Great,” Jeff grins and his worries ebb away from his mind. “Because I’ve got one hour to kill and a storage closet to use as a history classroom.”  

 

**iv. mania**

“Britta, what about vodka? Is that a good choice for a first legal drink?” Troy asks, as Britta shakes around the four olives in her drained glass.

Before she can respond, Jeff cuts in with his aged scotch and air of superiority. “The answer depends on how much you want to be wasted, see whenever Britta drinks…” he stops himself mid-sentence, afraid that he’s just exposed a whole semester of secret sex.

From across the table, Britta raises her eyebrows. He shrugs, a feeble attempt to defend himself. And in the middle of it all is Troy, completely oblivious to the silent conversation his two friends.

“What?” Troy asks, grinning innocently. “What does she do?”

“I won’t finish that sentence because soon enough, she’ll demonstrate that for us,” Jeff smirks. Troy stares curiously at the blonde, as if trying to figure out what heinous act a drunken Britta would commit. Jeff notices this by complete accident. Something twinges inside of him, but he isn’t sure what.

Soon Troy is distracted by whether or not Jeff’s scotch is an ideal first drink and Britta takes the opportunity to enact a revenge of wits. They spend the whole time arguing and soon enough, Troy starts to get bored of their quips.

When the man of the hour finally gets up to order his first legal beverage (a seven and seven, much to Jeff and Britta’s disappointment), Britta moves too, sliding over so that she and Jeff are sitting on the same couch.

“You _really_ want an encore of what happened the last time we were at a bar,” she teases him, her voice slurred and hoarse.

He grins, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he breathes out in a low whisper, “That _might_ have been on my mind the entire night. Why? Do you want to do a repeat performance?”

“Ah,” Britta stops just as Jeff reaches over to touch a lock of her hair. “Delay gratification.”

It takes them both a great deal of self-control to keep their hands to their empty glasses for the sake of not blowing their cover.

After they apologize to Abed, Troy drops Britta off at her place and Jeff one block away. He doesn’t connect the dots. Abed probably already has.

Jeff is still sober enough to walk with a clear direction of where he was going, give or take a few missteps. He finds Britta outside her apartment building and she practically yanks him inside.

Considering the sex that they had, the wait was definitely worth it.

 

**v. eros**

Jeff realizes he loves Britta when she starts making pancakes in the shape of a very caricatured cat. She wraps one of her blonde curls around her left index finger, while her right hand tries, very shoddily, to manipulate a spatula into forming a pair of flour cat ears.

“You know, a misshapen blob would be better than a perfect circle. Just as long as it’s not burnt,” he suppresses a laugh as he watches her at work.

“Shut up,” she says through gritted teeth, “I _will_ make these work.”

She bends over the pan and Jeff can’t help but notice how accidentally pretty she looks with uncombed hair and mismatched pajamas. Her sour attitude should’ve ruined the saccharinely domestic image, but somehow … they didn’t. Jeff ponders that, fascinated with how her wrist contorts in a multitude of inhuman positions just to get the spatula to shape the pancake.

“Jeff?”

He snaps out of his reverie, meeting her confused stare. “Sorry,” he mutters, “Just thinking about … Anthropology homework. What did you say?”

She continues off on a tangent about why circular shaped pancakes were devastatingly normal and somehow offensive to a minority social group. Jeff listens, shallowly, thoughts overtaken by the growing cloud of fear in his mind.

Because he loves Britta Perry and that thought alone is _terrifying_.

 

**vi. agape  
**

“Let me do this for you.”

She lunges at him in the heat of the battle and his hands turn away from his gun and into her hair. Each golden blonde strand feels unique, different, and he memorizes them. It feels as if he’s taking as much time as he wants, soaking up the sheer exhilaration of her presence. The reality is that the kiss is rushed and panicked, an attempt to buy time in a battle where their lives – or at least their course registration for next year, is at stake.

Britta pulls away and lifts his magazine up triumphantly. In the midst of the imminent danger, Jeff’s first thought is sudden fear that everything that just happened was no more than a trick.

Dazed and unable to react, Jeff simply watches as she exposes herself from behind the couch and runs towards Chang. She leaps and makes that sacrifice for _him_ , looking every bit defiant in a way that is almost dangerously beautiful.

Coming back to his senses, Jeff stands up and watches as Chang unveils his paint bomb and evil laugh. He seeks her eyes for the briefest moment before running and hurling himself through the doors.

Yes, Shirley is lurking in the back of his mind when he jumps through the doors and into victory, but at the center of it all is Britta. Like it always has been.

He watches as Britta continues to throw herself headfirst into everything. She declares her major, trying not to look dismayed as the rest of the group laughs at her. She throws the greatest and only Sophie B. Hawkins dance that Greendale has ever seen. Even he has to give her kudos for that, albeit from afar and through the soulless medium of text. She commits to a relationship with Troy, unabashed and wholeheartedly, and Troy does the same and Jeff can’t explain why it leaves an ache in his chest.

Except that he can and it’s because he’s in love with Britta Perry. He watches her jump from mountain to mountain with all of her strength and sooner or later, she’ll leave him in the dust.

And one day, he tells himself, he’ll make that leap and follow after her.

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t think Jeff/Britta are the ideal “perfect” couple that people should strive to be. But I do believe they complement each other and I think their relationship is so profoundly complex, it manages to be all of these things and none of them at once. They are some of these things more often than others and some less often.
> 
> In the meantime, it is midnight and my eyes hurt and my tenses and punctuation are all over the place, so if you notice any mistakes, please tell me! Gracias muchachos.


End file.
